Shopping Mom's Closet: Cole Haan Handbag for Moi!

Ladies, you know what's the best part of having a mother with good taste? Shopping HER closet! Now usually my mother keeps me out of there with a ten-foot pole, but somehow I made it in, promising to help her weed it out and put some things on eBay. That's when I came across this little baby.

First, it's Cole Haan Collection. Second, it's braided leather -- nude braided leather -- akin to something I might swoon over at Bottega Veneta. Third, it has the most adorable handles that fit into the crutch of my elbow in an ever so perfect Grace Kelly sort of way.

For the days when I must channel my inner Audrey, Grace or Jackie O., this baby is coming out to play.

♥

The King of Hearts Liked It. Make Dad a Raspberry Tart!

This may seem like a simple jump in the pool to most of you ladies, but for moi, I did not get the cooking gene. I am surrounded by excellent cooks and am usually very jealous of their ability to whip up anything and everything and have it turn out AMAZING (All-Caps, even). I am usually loathesomely jealous of the girl who can be the absolute center of the party and have everyone cooing because she was able to put flour, sugar and water together and have everyone weak at the knees. I am the worst cook. You can ask my husband. There is little I can not mess up.

What am I good at making? Drinks, usually. & salads. I'm like Cher's character from Mermaids. Do y'all remember that movie? That was the one with Winona Ryder in her young, pre-shoplifting, angst ridden years; Christina Ritchie before Addams Family; and Cher as their mother, for the limited point in time when she put down the box of Ogilvie and had the cutest retro hair-do. Anyhoo. My point about the movie is that Cher's character can't cook. She only makes finger foods and ka-bobs everything. I hate to admit this, but I usually fulfill that role. It's agony. But this week, peeps, Costco turned my world upside down and put me on a path to try something new. They offered raspberries in the mega Costco-sized container for $3.77! $3.77 is an amazing deal in Hawaii for 3 cups of raspberries. So my idea was to enlist the aid of my Sister in Law and get to work on a simple raspberry tart. Yes, peeps, this is 101 for most of you but seemed like Mount Everest to me!

Our starting point was the Joy of Baking (it came up first in the web search) recipe. It looked simple enough to not intimidate this remedial baker. Here was the starting point:

Pate Brisee (Short Crust Pastry):
1 1/4 cups (175 grams) all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon
(2 grams) salt
1 tablespoon (14 grams) granulated white sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) (113 grams) unsalted butter, chilled, and cut into 1 inch (2.5 cm) pieces
1/8 to 1/4 cup (30 - 60 ml) ice water

Filling:
2 cups fresh raspberries
2 tablespoons (30 grams) granulated white sugar
1 tablespoon (15 grams) unsalted butter, melted

Pate Brisee: In a food processor, place the flour, salt, and sugar and process until combined. Add the butter and process until the mixture resembles coarse meal (about 15 seconds). Pour 1/8 cup (30 ml) water in a slow, steady stream through the feed tube until the pastry just holds together when pinched. Add remaining water, if necessary. Do not process more than about 30 seconds.
Turn the pastry out onto your work surface, gather it into a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for about one hour to chill the butter and allow the gluten in the flour to relax.
Once the pastry has chilled, remove from refrigerator and place on a lightly floured surface. Roll the pastry into an 11 inch (28 cm) round. To prevent the pastry from sticking to the counter and to ensure uniform thickness, keep lifting up and turning the pastry a quarter turn as you roll (always roll from the center of the pastry outwards to get uniform thickness). Transfer the pastry to a parchment paper lined baking sheet
and sprinkle the pastry with 1 tablespoon of sugar. Leaving about a 1 1/2 inch (4 cm) border all around, cover the pastry with the raspberries, stem ends down. I like to start at the outside edge and work toward the center of the pastry in concentric circles, making sure the raspberries are placed close together. (If possible, use raspberries that are of uniform size.) Gently fold the edges of the pastry up and over the filling, pleating as necessary, being careful not to squash the raspberries. Brush the edges of the pastry with melted butter, and then sprinkle the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar over the raspberries and crust.

Our product before baking.

And after! Ta-da!

Being a Saturday night and having no energy to go buy vanilla ice cream, we served it with some whipped cream and Snickers Ice Cream, LOL.

But it was yummy. & self-esteem boosting. That doesn't happen together quite often, so I enjoyed it and lapped it up. Every. Last. Crumb.


For the recipe first hand, go to the Joy of Baking. Enjoy!

It had to be posted!

Warning! This is NOT me. But I've been helping my sister-in-law take photos for her baby shower invites and I thought I'd share! Have a glorious day ladies!

Stella Ain't Got Nothing on Me

Ladies I'm feeling like I got my groove back, blogging-wise. I think what it took was a good break from the blogosphere, time to get over the newness of my *old* location, time to visit with all the friends and the family my heart and schedule could fit in, time to visit all the stores I hadn't had a chance to go into over the last four years.

[Little Guy at the beach in Honolulu. Pail and watering can ready for sand castle engineering perfection.]

& also, a new blog layout! How are these fabilis new backgrounds and templates blogger is pushing our way? Loverly, if you ask me. I needed something to wake me up and I'm loving this new background. It is my summer sizzle, ladies! Pass me a mai tai-tini (Never had a mai tai-tini? Oh you must)! I'm ready for a little fun in the sun!

Building a Better Cart: Great Sale Items that are Calling My Name

"Yooohoooo! Hey you! Lady who hasn't shopped with us for a while! Did you see this? Did you? Come over here and check these out!" Y'all I swear that is what I'm hearing from the J.Crew website.

I haven't been in forever. I actually made my first purchase from J.Crew since I've been to Hawaii only yesterday. That would be the first in 2 months. Please don't let that fool you into thinking I haven't shopped in eight weeks. Pshh! Ofcourse I have, but my world has been full of random Nordstrom purchases, Ann Taylor 40%-off deals, and great Target finds. & I'm proud to say, all in moderation.

But one little purchase seems to open the flood gates, do they not? So here I am, one purchase deep so far, and I find myself in less than 24 hours perusing the website and building a cart full of items from Summer Sale that are rather fabilis, if I must say so myself. & while I am supposed to be saving for my house and all the awesome accroutements that come with it, here I am, in J.Crack-land.

Stretch Flannel Banquette Dress, $129: How gorgeous for work. I have it in black but this fabric with its Heathered Grey color is amazing. J.Crew calls the color Heather Graphite. I call it fabric perfection. But mind you, it's for us girls who are not well-endowed. It cuts rather low.

Gabriella Dress $59 in black. I have it in Navy. Aaah, do you see the pattern arising? I already have this one and here I am buying in multiples. But I'm in Hawaii, peeps. Hawaii. Where the sun shines 99% of the year with a cool breeze keeping the temps roughly at 80 degrees. All the time. Everyday is beach day. & thus, I justify the multiple purchase of this great dress. Plus it hides the rolls and focuses on the upper chest-a-ses area, therefore highlighting the good and camoflouging the bad. Yes. A worthy purchase indeed.

The Surf Blossom Shell: I love this for its ethereal 1920's feel. Like I'll feel 20lbs lighter in it. I'm envisioning very cute with distressed jeans (like below) or with a black pencil skirt and smart heels for the office (please, a blazer or cardi as a cover up. I have a rule about bare arms). Or with black skinny jeans and sky high heels for an evening of dancing with the girls. Me loves.

& finally, just a great pair of jeans that are a deal at $39. Matchsticks, which look great with flat gladiator sandals for day. I actually have siphoned my closet free of any light colored jeans after going through a few seasons of dark-dark midnight washes and blackest-of-the-black denims. So this is a great way to offset all that darkness. Let there be light, peeps! Let there be light!

But... And there is a BIG but in this. None of these can be mine, peeps. None of them. I have enough willpower to say no and back away from the shopping cart. I have a house to purchase. Floors to choose. Off-white slipcovered couches to buy. Chinese antique cabinets to display. I can not get distracted by these glorious items. Because you don't go in the hole by massive items. Those we all tend to budget for. It's the little items like these that pick away at our savings! & I just can't have that right now! I need to focus!

... But I still needed to talk about them. These loverlies. So thank you for being my sounding board! Have a great Sunday!

The Final Choices - Interior is Coming Together!

Here are some of the final choices for the new house! Kitchens will be white cabinets, dark wood floors, corian counters that are a dark grey, sort of colored like concrete / honed dark granite. Bathrooms will be limestone floors on the first level. Banisters will be a dark wood color.

The master bath will have an octagon and dot tile, with counters to sort of match, with white cabinets. Can't wait to see it all together!

So Excited!

I'm Alive & Well and Obsessed with Interiors and House Plans!

Ladies forgive my lapse in blogging. I have been busy with 4 years' worth of birthday parties, baby showers, weddings, and graduations that I've missed while living in Japan. In the time that I do have and consider to be "spare," I'm mostly having dinners with girlfriends I've missed and spending time with family. If there are ever good reasons to not blog, well, these are it.

In the time that I do have to actually sit still, I've been trying to get my act together to consider interiors in the house we are building here in Hawaii. It will be a two-story "Old Hawaii" (read: Missionary Plantation style home with a touch of Asian influence) type residence, with a large front porch and a balcony on the 2nd level. Both the balcony and the porch on the first level will have french doors to enter the home.

I need this house to have good bones, ladies. & I want to do it right. I so don't want to put something in "just for now" and have me pining away for the thing I actually wanted year after year. The house is being built from the ground up, so this is my opportunity to get everything I wanted (and within budget's reach, bien sur).

My plan (because y'all know I am always -- ALWAYS -- armed with a plan) is to go with something I am calling a cross between Modern Island Classic. With a small Asian touch. I have Chinese antiques I've collected over the years that I want to incorporate into the house, but I also want to keep the house fresh and young. & uncluttered. I've found some inspiration in the pictures that follow and am always looking for your input, of course.

This picture above has good bones and the color scheme I'm looking for. It's a little more tschochke-filled than I would prefer and doesn't truly give the fresh young feel I'm looking for. Again, I like it more for the color scheme and the shutters in the back than anything else. I'd like to do something similar but less cluttered. Hubs and I are really drawn to very dark floors throughout the lower level (kitchen, living room, dining room (more on that later) and a bathroom) and white walls. We'd like to put a mix of dark wood plantation shutters and white linen drapes on thick, dark wood rods. We're looking for a light creme sectional a la Potterybarn for the living room and a large, natural jute or sisal rug. We already have a great antique elm Chinese cabinet to hide the behemoth that is our flat screen TV and a square chinese antique kang table that we'll use as a coffee table. I'd like to accent with a few bright and bold throw pillows from Thomas Paul for some color and fun.

For the bedroom, I love this scene above. LOVE. We have a king-sized bed similar to the one shown. Again, white, dark wood and dark wood plantation shutters. Basically a bedroom version of the living room. :0) The master bath includes a jacuzzi tub, a separate shower with glass enclosure and a his/hers sink. The sink console will be white cabinets. But other than that, what do y'all suggest? I'm at a loss and I have to make decisions on what to do very soon! I'd like a spa feeling that goes with the idea that, "Hello! I live in Hawaii! & I'm on Hawaiian Time and I just want to walk around in yoga clothes in my gorgeous house!" What do y'all think would look nice to go with the ideas I'm throwing around for the master bedroom?

Our kitchen will have white cabinets, for sure. & dark wood floors as the living room and kitchen are merged into one great room. The appliances will also be stainless steel like the photo above. We're thinking of doing concrete countertops in a dark grey to sort of go with that minimal feeling. I'm not the girl who will seal granite or appreciate granite. I want something that gives a bit of a modern vibe against a backdrop of all the antique goings-on. My logic is that without all the small tchotchkes, the antiques can feel modern and young. With the tchotchkes, it can feel old and a little cluttered. Maybe I'm going through an early mid-life crisis, but I need the fresh and young feeling!

& now, the bathroom downstairs. I want to create something different in there that still flows with the rest of the house. I like the idea of the above photo -- something with a wood feel and a white bowl on top the vanity.

I'm thinking of using a cabinet that looks EXACTLY like the one below that I got a few years ago. What do you think?

Ladies I can't tell you how much I've missed you. You girls are my sounding board. Hoping you can help me out in any way and if you can't and you just want to stop by to say hello, please do so! I love hearing from everyone!

Have a great weekend!